Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

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“”A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.

— Joseph Stalin

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), more commonly known as the Soviet Union or CCCP, was a totalitarian, state athiest, and Marxist-Leninist global superpower that spanned across Europe and Asia, notorious for causing massive famines that killed millions, human right abuses, being extremely un-free, and running several totalitarian puppets. He wears a ushanka with communist symbol on it, and carries a sickle to kill people. Being the first ever communist state and born out of the Bolsheviks, to many, the USSR embodies the entire stereotype of communism. He is the reason why that even today, many people associate Russia with communism.

Soviet Union wouldn't hesitate to commit genocide, mass killings or murder his closest ranks if they slightly disagree with him. He also hates religions and other theism, believing that there is no god except for him. USSR produces a lot of resources, but almost none goes to his own people, whom living conditions are very poor under his communist rule, having to line up hours for food and getting shot in the streets for being homeless and making the nation look bad. He is infamous for his deadly purges among his own men. He doesn't like saving hostages, because in his mind, hostages are traitors who defected ideologically which allowed them to be taken hostage in the first place.

USSR claims to be the leader of the communist movement across the world, and wanting to spread communist influence, USSR is responsible for propping up other murderous regimes that also killed millions. He hates fascists after Nazi betrayed him in 1941.

History

Leninist Era

In 1922, the USSR was established by the Russian SFSR, Ukrainian SSR, and Byelorussian SSR after the conclusion of major military campaigns left the Bolsheviks the de-facto victor in the Russian Civil War.

Immediately, USSR faced crises of his own making. Enthusiastically implementing Marxist policies had led to widespread famine and suffering across Russia, killing millions of people. The communist leadership was forced to roll back much of their political program—retroactively termed " war communism"—and institute the New Economic Policy (NEP), basically capitalism. This was an effective truce with the Russian peasantry, as they were allowed to work their own land and sell crops without intervention from the state.

However, the Soviet communists never intended the NEP as anything other than an emergency measure to stave off imminent rebellion. During the famine caused by war communism, a friend of Lenin's remarked that the disaster he'd orchestrated was good in that it would "destroy faith not only in the tsar, but in God too." To further erode faith in anything other than the state, Lenin passed a secret resolution in 1922, stipulating that all valuables must be removed from churches and other religious institutions "with ruthless resolution, leaving nothing in doubt, and in the very shortest time."

The NEP stabilized the collapsing economy and helped restore agricultural and industrial output to near pre-war levels by the mid-1920s. Under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, the Soviet Union also consolidated his political structure, forming a highly centralized and totalitarian one-party system dominated by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Opposition parties were banned, and even internal dissent within the Communist Party was increasingly suppressed.

To secure Bolshevik control, the secret police apparatus Cheka was established and later reorganized into the GPU. These institutions carried out arrests, executions, and repression against perceived " counter-revolutionaries", laying the groundwork for a system of political terror that would expand in later years.

In 1924, Lenin died after a series of strokes, leaving behind a power vacuum at the top of the Soviet leadership. A fierce struggle for succession followed, primarily between Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky. Trotsky advocated for "permanent revolution", arguing that socialism could not survive in isolation, while Stalin promoted "socialism in one country", focusing on consolidating power within the USSR.

Stalinist Era

Main article: Stalinist Era

Through political maneuvering, alliances, and control over party appointments, Stalin gradually outmaneuvered his rivals. By the late 1920s, Trotsky had been expelled from the party and later exiled, while Stalin emerged as the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union. This marked the end of the Leninist era and the beginning of a new phase characterized by rapid industrialization, forced collectivization, and far more extreme centralization of power.

“”I am the man who arranges the blocks, that continue to fall from up above! The food on your plate, now belongs to the state, a collective regime of peace and love. I have no choice, in arranging the blocks, under Bolsheviks rule what they say goes! The rule of the game, is that we all are the same, and my blocks must create unbroken rows! Long live Stalin, he loves you… Sing these words, or you know what he'll do!

— Complete History of the Soviet Union, Arranged to the Melody of Tetris

Communist regimes use terror and mass murder as a means of reinforcing their dictatorships, such as in the case with the Soviet Union. In 1928, the New Economic Policy was scrapped and replaced with collective farms controlled by the regime. Stalin launched a series of ambitious five-year plans aimed at rapid industrialization and the transformation of the USSR from a largely agrarian society into a major industrial power. Russian peasants, who objected to having their land and grain seized, put of stiff resistance. They would pay dearly for their disobedience.

In 1929, USSR made a new week system, because he thought people weren't working enough and didn't like them having Sundays off, and also since the Soviet leadership hated everything religious. The new "Soviet Calendar" originally had 5 days in a week plus six weeks in a month. This was later changed to 6 days a week.

In July 1929, China tried to take back the Chinese Eastern Railway in Manchuria, so he occupied it. USSR wasn't happy about that, so he sent troops to fight China, who was also supported by the White guerrillas. Throughout the war, 5000 Chinese were lost, and USSR claimed that only 800 of his men had died, though modern estimates figure that he was lying and way more people actually died. In December, USSR won, and he controlled the Bolshoy Ussuriysky Island.

Heavy industry was prioritized above all else. Massive state-directed projects expanded steel, coal, and machinery production, while new industrial cities were built across the country. Although these policies significantly increased industrial output, they came at enormous human cost, with harsh working conditions, forced labor, and widespread shortages of consumer goods. At the same time, Stalin initiated the collectivization of agriculture. Independent peasants were forced into collective farms, and wealthier peasants, labeled " kulaks", were targeted for repression, deportation, or execution. This policy led to catastrophic consequences. In the 1930s, USSR began to seize grain, potatoes and other foods from good-farming places, causing severe famine in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, including the famine of 1932-1933, most notably the Holodomor in Ukraine that killed millions.

Politically, Stalin established a system of total control. The state intensified censorship, propaganda, and surveillance, while the security apparatus, now reorganized as the NKVD, expanded reach. During Stalin's purges in the 1930s, the Soviet communists slaughtered more than twenty million so-called spies and traitors, as well as those with dissenting opinions. Between 1936 and 1938, Stalin carried out the Great Purge, a campaign of political repression that eliminated perceived enemies within the Communist Party, military, and society at large. Hundreds of thousands were executed, and millions were sent to forced labor camps in the Gulag system. The GULAG, (Glavnoye Upravleniye LAGerey), or Main Camp Administration, is a system of concentration camps were prisoners do harsh forced labor. If anyone slightly disagrees with the state, he or she will be sent to a gulags. Gulags are common among the cold region of Siberia, the survival rate being around 30-50%. The Soviet government claims 1.6 million people have perished in gulags, though the real numbers probably are way higher. The gulags lasted from 1918 to 1953, and at least 14 million people have been imprisoned in them, also were the inspiration for the concentration camps in Nazi Germany. Today, the gulag is a symbol of communism oppression.

The progressive family codes created by Lenin proved to be disastrous, with huge amounts of orphans roaming the streets. So in 1936, Stalin, in a pragmatic move, rolled back these policies, restricting divorce, banning abortion, and glorifying motherhood. ( Marx would not be proud…)

Despite the internal turmoil, the Soviet Union continued to strengthen militarily. However, rounds after rounds of Stalin's purges in the Red Army leadership severely weakened effectiveness. Meanwhile, in 1938, USSR had some skirmishes with Imperial Japan's expansion into Manchuria, resulting in a non-aggression pact that year.

World War II

Main article: Soviet Union in World War II

In 1939, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Germany led by Adolf Hitler, a non-aggression treaty that included secret protocols dividing Eastern Europe into spheres of influence between the two. So, in September 1939, the two totalitarians invaded and carved up Poland. In the following months USSR occupied Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, plus some Finnish clay he barley won over in the Winter War of 1940. The same year, the Soviet Calendar was switched back to the regular 7 day week because it's stupid and inconvenient.

However, in 1941, Nazi Germany broke the pact and launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union. The conflict, known in the USSR as the Great Patriotic War, became one of the most devastating fronts of World War II. After initial setbacks as Germany pushed deep into Soviet clay such as Ukraine and Byelorussia, in late 1942 the Soviet Union was able mobilized his vast resources and population as Germany was freezing to death in the Russian winter. With American aid, USSR eventually turned the tide at key battles such as Battle of Stalingrad of 1942-1943.

In 1945, the Red Army marched into Berlin, and Nazi Germany killed himself in his bunker. In the aftermath of the war, the USSR emerged as one of two global superpowers, establishing a sphere of influence over Eastern Europe and setting the stage for a prolonged proxy conflict and standoff against the other superpower, United States.

Post-War & Cold War under Stalin

Reconstruction was USSR's immediate domestic priority. Entire industries had to be rebuilt from rubble, agriculture had been savaged by occupation and war, and millions of Soviet citizens were displaced, wounded, or psychologically shattered. The Fourth Five-Year Plan (1946-1950) channeled resources almost exclusively into heavy industry and military capacity, largely at the expense of consumer goods and agricultural recovery. Soviet citizens, who had hoped the victory might bring some relaxation of the hardships of the Stalin years, were largely disappointed.

The postwar years brought a sharp tightening of ideological control. Andrei Zhdanov launched a sweeping crackdown on Soviet cultural and intellectual life beginning in 1946—a campaign that came to bear his name, the Zhdanovshchina. Writers, composers, filmmakers, and scientists were attacked for " formalism", " cosmopolitanism", and undue admiration of Western culture. The poets Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Zoshchenko were publicly denounced. Composers were condemned for producing music insufficiently accessible to the Soviet masses. There were also renewed waves of repression, though they never quite reached the apocalyptic scale of the Great Terror of 1936-1938. Returning Soviet POWs were viewed with suspicion, having been captured by the enemy was treated as potential evidence of treason and many were sent directly from German captivity to Soviet labor camps. Entire ethnic groups who had been accused of collaboration with the Nazis, such as the Crimean Tatars and the Chechens, remained in their places of deportation under brutal conditions.

Between 1945 and 1948, Stalin moved methodically to establish Soviet-dominated governments across Eastern Europe. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and East Germany were brought under communist rule through a combination of electoral manipulation, coalition politics, intimidation, and outright coercion. The process culminated in the Soviet-backed coup of Czechoslovakia in February 1948, alarming the Western powers. However, USSR wasn't able to bring Yugoslavia down to his knees, so he expelled him from the Cominform.

Relations with the Western Allies deteriorated rapidly. The key fault lines were Germany , nuclear weapons, and the future of Eastern Europe. The Truman Doctrine, committing the United States to containing Soviet expansion, and the Marshall Plan, offering American economic aid to Europe, were both perceived by USSR as acts of hostility. Stalin forbade the Eastern European states from participating in the Marshall Plan.

In June 1948, USSR cut off all land access to the Western-controlled sectors of Berlin, hoping to force the Western powers out of the city. The Western Allies responded with a sustained airlift, flying in supplies for nearly a year. USSR backed down in May 1949, lifting the blockade, a significant early setback for USSR. That same year, the Western powers formalized their alliance with the creation of NATO.

USSR's nuclear program, driven by an enormous intelligence and scientific effort (aided in part by atomic espionage in America and Britain, as well as Operation Osoaviakhim), achieved the first successful test in August 1949, which was years sooner than Western analysts had expected. The American monopoly on nuclear weapons was broken, and now there were two nuclear superpowers with enough warheads to decimate the Earth over and over. The following year, Soviet-backed North Korea invaded the South in June 1950, kicking off the Korean War and drawing the United States into another major conflict, setting the Cold War in stone. USSR also sent many spies and agents to subvert American society from within, which worked well beyond his expectations.

The final and most ominous episode of the Stalin Era was the so-called " Doctors' Plot". In 1951, Stalin's security apparatus announced that a group of predominantly Jewish physicians in Moscow had been conspiring to murder Soviet leaders through deliberate medical malpractice. The accusations sent a wave of terror through Soviet Jewish communities and led many observers, inside and outside the USSR, to fear that a new, massive purge was imminent.

It never came. On 5 March 1953, Joseph Stalin died of a stroke at his dacha outside Moscow. The announcement sent shockwaves through the Soviet Union and the broader communist world. For millions of Soviet citizens, Stalin had been the only leader they had ever known in their adult lives—an object of genuine terror, genuine devotion, and everything in between. The men who surrounded him in his final years: Lavrentiy Beria, Vyacheslav Molotov, Georgy Malenkov, and Nikita Khrushchev immediately began maneuvering for succession. The Doctors' Plot accusations were quietly dropped. The Gulag system slowly began to release some of its millions of prisoners. An era had ended, and the immense, unresolved question of what would come after Stalin was left to the survivors.

Khrushchevist Era

Main article: Khrushchev Thaw

USSR's succession struggle following Stalin's death in 1953 was swift and brutal. Lavrentiy Beria, head of the feared NKVD and perhaps the most powerful man in the USSR after Stalin, initially appeared to be the frontrunner. He moved quickly to court popularity, releasing some political prisoners and proposing a relaxation of control over Eastern Europe. His rivals in the Politburo, terrified of what a man who knew all their secrets could do with absolute power, moved against him first. In June 1953, Beria was arrested, tried in secret, and shot. The security apparatus he had commanded was reorganized yet again, this time into the KGB.

The government of the Soviet Union always held a monopoly on all foreign trade activity, but only after Stalin's death did the government accord importance to foreign trade activities.

Georgy Malenkov emerged as USSR's leading figure through 1953 and into 1954, advocating consumer goods production over heavy industry and a less confrontational posture abroad, making him unpopular with the military-industrial complex. But Khrushchev, earthy, energetic, and underestimated by almost everyone around him, steadily built his position within the party apparatus. By 1955, he had outmaneuvered Malenkov sufficiently to force his removal as Prime Minister, replacing him with the more pliable Nikolai Bulganin. Real power was increasingly Khrushchev's, though the collective leadership form was maintained for a time.

De-Stalinization

In 1956, at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev delivered a secret speech that began the de-Stalinization process. It was a four-hour denunciation of Stalin, his purges, show trials, cult of personality, mass executions of fellow communists, catastrophic military blunders at the start of WWII, and the like. The speech was electrifying and terrifying in equal measure; delegates sat in stunned silence; some reportedly fainted. However, Khrushchev did not want to blame the whole system and intended to do keep it in place.

The speech was supposed to be a secret, intended as a private address to party delegates. However, as expected, it was leaked and broadcasted by Western radio stations into Eastern Europe and the USSR, sending shockwaves through and through. Word reached Poland and Hungary, who both uprisen against the USSR. USSR was able to talk things out with Poland, however he rolled tanks into Hungary and killed a bunch of people with brutal efficiency.

The speech was also profoundly alarming to USSR's fellow hardline communist ally, PRC. Chairman Mao saw de-Stalinization not as honest self-correction but as dangerous revisionism that would embolden enemies and undermine communist parties worldwide. He also drew an uncomfortably personal parallel: if Soviet leaders could turn on Stalin after his death, they might one day turn on Mao. And so began tensions between the two communist hegemons.

The late 1950s saw a remarkable, if cautious, opening in Soviet cultural life. Writers, filmmakers, and artists tested new boundaries. Anti-Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsy's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), depicting life in a Stalinist labor camp, was published with Khrushchev's personal approval, an astonishing event by any measure. Poetry became a mass phenomenon. This period became known simply as "the Thaw".

Space Race & Cold War Confrontations

In addition to geopolitical influence, USSR was also competing against the United States technologically. In the Space Race, USSR had his greatest technological triumphs: in 1957 he sent the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, and the first dog (and first animal in orbit), Laika, to space, followed by sending the first man, Yuri Gagarin, to space in 1961. USSR exploited this to the fullest, and people tried to forget the hardships of the Stalinist years to feel pride in their country. However, what was hidden from public was that Laika died of overheating a few hours into orbit as the experiment was meant to be a one-way ticket and Laika was just a random stray dog they kidnapped from the streets.

Yet no matter how technologically advanced USSR had become, he cannot deny his communist nature. He got mad at East Germany for trying to escape to West Germany via Berlin, so he built a massive wall across the East-West border of the city to stop the East Germans from escaping. Then came the most perilous confrontation of the entire Cold War: the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, when the discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba brought the superpowers to the brink of nuclear war. Thirteen days of agonizing back-channel diplomacy ended with a Soviet withdrawal from Cuba in exchange for USA to pledge not to invade the nation and to remove missiles from Türkiye.

By the 1960s, PRC had turned his back on USSR for his revisionism, splitting the Eastern Bloc in two. Most of Eastern Europe remained the Soviet's influence, except for the spoiled brat Albania who turned to China. USSR also supported Vietnam against China.

Under Khrushchev's rule, USSR made chaotic and impulsive decisions. Khrushchev's management style alienated the party apparatus. He had an obsession of growing corn everywhere, even where there shouldn't be corn, and his agricultural reforms largely failed; his reorganization of the party into industrial and agricultural wings created chaos; the Cuban Missile Crisis was seen as a humiliating climb-down. In October 1964, while Khrushchev was on holiday, a conspiracy of Politburo colleagues removed him from power in a bloodless palace coup. And thus, Khrushchev spent his remaining years under house arrest.

Brezhnevist Era

Leonid Brezhnev became the leader of the USSR after Khrushchev's ousting. Brezhnev represented a conscious reaction against Khrushchev's turbulence. His watchword was "stability", which shaded quickly into stagnation. The party elite (the nomenklatura) were given security of tenure, perks, and privileges in exchange for loyalty. The atmosphere of creative experimentation from the Thaw was shut down. Writers and intellectuals who pushed too far were prosecuted, sent to psychiatric hospitals, or forced into exile.

In August 1968, USSR and Warsaw Pact rolled tanks into Czechoslovakia because he was getting too much freedom. Brezhnev subsequently articulated what became known as the Brezhnev Doctrine: the Soviet Union reserved the right to intervene in any socialist country where socialism was deemed to be under threat. It was a chilling message to Eastern Europe and also to reformers within the USSR.

The early 1970s brought a period of superpower relaxation known as détente. Under Brezhnev, USSR pursued arms control negotiations with USA, resulting in the SALT I treaty in 1972 and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The Helsinki Accords of 1975 were a landmark achievement: 35 nations recognized the post-war borders of Europe (a longstanding Soviet demand) in exchange for human rights commitments that would, ironically, provide a legal framework for dissidents across the Soviet bloc to challenge their governments in the years ahead.

Beneath the surface of superpower prestige, the Soviet economy was quietly rotting. The command economy was structurally incapable of generating innovation or responding to consumer needs. Corruption was endemic. Agricultural productivity was chronically poor, and USSR was forced to import grain from the United States, an embarrassing dependency. Oil revenues from Siberian fields masked the underlying dysfunction throughout the 1970s, but when oil prices fell in the 1980s, the structural crisis became impossible to ignore. The Soviet military-industrial complex consumed a staggering proportion of national output (estimates suggest 15–25% of GDP) crowding out consumer goods and civilian investment. Ordinary Soviet citizens lived in a world of shortages, queues, and gray monotony, while the nomenklatura enjoyed access to special shops, dachas, and privileges invisible to the public.

In December 1979, Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan to prop up a collapsing communist government. It was a fateful decision. What Soviet planners imagined would be a brief stabilization operation became a brutal, decade-long war against a determined mujahideen insurgency backed by the United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and China. The war killed over 15,000 Soviet soldiers, wounded hundreds of thousands, and dragged on with no prospect of victory. It devastated the USSR's international reputation, triggered a Western boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, ended détente, and sapped the morale of Soviet society. By the 1980s, not many people truly believed in communism anymore. But there was still a residual fear of speaking opinions publicly and being critical of the regime.

By the late 1980s, the USSR had became a "donut empire". Usually the case in empires such as the USSR, the centralized core part of the empire is supposed to be the most rich and prosperous, however it was not the case anymore with USSR. The rich areas were places like Czechoslovakia. Everything from other places would be labeled "importnaya" meaning "imported" (instead of their country of origin), and they were all better than the stuff USSR got, which was a really bad sign. Soviet foreign trade played only a minor role in the Soviet economy; for example in 1985, exports and imports each accounted for only 4% of the Soviet gross national product. Soviet Union maintained this low level because he could draw upon a large energy and raw material base, and because he historically had pursued a policy of self-sufficiency.

In Brezhnev's final years, he was suffering from visible physical and mental decline. Brezhnev was visibly incapacitated at public events, yet continued to hold power until his death in November 1982. He was succeeded by Yuri Andropov, the former KGB chief who was already gravely ill with kidney disease. Andropov died in February 1984 after just 15 months in power. His successor, Konstantin Chernenko, was himself an elderly, infirm figure who died in March 1985 after barely a year in office. The spectacle of three Soviet leaders dying within three years exposed USSR's gerontocracy.

Gorbachevist Era

When Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary in March 1985, at 54 he was the youngest member of the Politburo. Energetic, intellectually curious, and genuinely committed to reform, he represented a generational break. Gorbachev believed the Soviet system could be saved, but only through radical renovation. He would discover, too late, that the system could not be reformed without being destroyed.

Gorbachev introduced two interlocking reform programs that would reshape Soviet society:

• Glasnost ("openness") relaxed censorship of media and encouraged public debate. Newspapers began reporting on crime, corruption, environmental disasters, and historical atrocities. The crimes of Stalin were aired fully and publicly for the first time, and television became startlingly candid, unusual for the Soviet citizens that were used to the state's propaganda. The effect was electric and destabilizing. Decades of suppressed grievances, national resentments, and historical trauma flooded into public life simultaneously.
• Perestroika ("restructuring") was an attempt to reform the Soviet economy by introducing limited market mechanisms, decentralizing decision-making, and cracking down on corruption. It succeeded mainly in disrupting existing economic relationships without creating functional new ones. Shortages somehow became even worse than before, the economy contracted (even causing inflation), black markets thrived, and popular frustration, newly liberated by glasnost to express itself, turned increasingly bitter.

On 26 April 1986, Reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine exploded, causing the worst nuclear accident in history. Like always, the initial Soviet response was to minimize and conceal, but glasnost made a total cover-up impossible. The disaster exposed the deep dysfunction of Soviet institutions, the culture of falsified reporting, and the gap between official claims and reality. Gorbachev later said that Chernobyl was a turning point in his thinking about the need for radical transparency. And on 7 April 1989, the Soviet nuclear submarine K-278 Komsomolets sank in the Norwegian Sea after a catastrophic fire.

Gorbachev made clear that the USSR would not use force to maintain communist governments in Eastern Europe, effectively revoking the Brezhnev Doctrine. The consequences were revolutionary, literally. In 1989, one after another, the USSR puppets of Eastern Europe collapsed, reducing Soviet influence significantly. The Berlin Wall in East Germany fell on 9 November, one of the most iconic moments of the 20th century. The Soviet empire in Europe dissolved in a matter of months, largely peacefully, and Gorbachev stood aside and let it happen. It was an astonishing abdication—a historic gift to the people of Eastern Europe.

A McDonalds store, the greatest symbol of American capitalism, was opened in downtown Moscow in 1990. People formed huge lines all around the block. This was American influence right in the heart of the Soviet Union, this was a sign that the Cold War was over. This was a sign that America has won.

Collapse & Fall

The USSR was a multi-ethnic state, with many distinct nationalities within his borders. This rise in nationalism threatened the Soviet state. With this one in a lifetime chance, suppressed national identities began to assert themselves with increasing force. In August 1989, on the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, an estimated two million people formed a human chain called the Baltic Way, stretching 675 kilometers across Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. It was an extraordinary act of peaceful defiance. By 1990, Lithuania had declared independence, followed by Latvia and Estonia. Gorbachev attempted to prevent this with economic blockades and eventually military force as troops killed Lithuanian and Latvian civilians in January 1991. But this could not reverse the tide. Nationalist movements surged and independence was declared in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, and Ukraine.

In 1990, Gorbachev introduced competitive elections for a new Congress of People's Deputies, the first genuinely contested elections in Soviet history. The results were stunning: prominent communist officials were defeated by reformers, nationalists, and independents. Boris Yeltsin, a former Gorbachev ally turned radical critic, became the first democratically elected President of the Russian Federation in June 1991 by popular vote. The Communist Party's constitutional monopoly on power was abolished. Gorbachev maneuvered to hold the union together with the New Union Treaty that would give the republics far greater autonomy. The treaty was scheduled to be signed on 20 August 1991 and replace the Union Treaty of 1922 that created USSR.

In August 1991, a group of hard-line communist officials attempted a coup to overthrow Gorbachev. The coup failed, since it had no support from the rank-and-file Party members or the general public, and the conspirators were arrested or committed suicide. But still, it further exposed the weakness of the central government and emboldened the independence movements in the republics. The coup accelerated everything it was meant to prevent; republic after republic declared independence. The Baltic States received international recognition. Ukraine voted for independence on 1 December 1991, in a referendum passed by over 90% of voters, including a majority in Russian-speaking regions. Without Ukraine, a Soviet Union was inconceivable.

On 8 December 1991, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus met secretly at a hunting lodge in the Białowieża Forest and signed an agreement dissolving the Soviet Union and creating the Commonwealth of Independent States in his place. Gorbachev was not consulted. To someone maybe as recent as a decade ago would not have been able to conceive such an event, the strong superpower notorious for absolute control that is the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics being peacefully dissolved and erased by some separatists out in some random forest!

On 25 December 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as President of the Soviet Union—a country that, by that point, had already effectively ceased to exist in any meaningful way. At 7:32 PM, the Soviet flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time, and the Russian tricolor was raised in its place.

The Soviet Union, after 69 years, was gone.

Culture

Main article: Socialist Realism

USSR destroyed Russia's culture and replaced it with Soviet propaganda.

Soviet aesthetics usually include faces of communist leaders in red and white, people holding hammers and sickles, and five-pointed stars.

Trivia

• In 1945 Soviet schoolchildren gave an US ambassador a carved American seal as a gesture of friendship. The ambassador hung it in his office for seven years. Turns out there was a listening device planted in the seal, and it was nothing more than a dishonorable spy device. This also proved that Soviet spies in the West were way more common than most people think.
• USSR was the first country that can into space.
• In the USSR, some comics, especially the good ones such as rare Soviet comics, imported Western comics or colouring books of Soviet cartoon characters are traded with tickets earned by children by giving their teacher old paper for recycling. When the kids hear that something really good has come to the store, they spray their paper with water to make them heavier.

Relationships

Friends

• КНР - Best friend! I supported you since the beginning, after all, the CPC was originally a far-eastern branch of operations! Soviet and China, two biggest communist states! Together, we are undefeatable! We shall export revolution the world and free all from slavery and destroy the old world!! XAXAXAXAXXAXAXAXAXAXAXAXA!! Wait, why you call me a traitor to communism? I thought we were friends…
• Варшавский Договор - My alliance! We will remove those capitalist and imperialist pigs!
• Восточная Германия - Child dear that I saved from the clutches of evil west, and I put behind a wall to keep safe from their influences. You love me, right?
• Чехословакия - Another country I saved from Nazi and West. Let me just steal borrow all your uranium. But stop getting ideas of freedom or I'll hurt you…
• Куба - Fellow anti-American communist! Take my nukes and smash that pig!! Actually, nevermind give them back I made a deal with America.
• Вьетнам - Thank you for removing Burger and his puppet (with my help of course), comrade he deserved it!

Frenemies

• Post-Soviet States - Why are yuo'll lining up for independence instead of bread?

Enemies of the State

• КАПИТАЛИСТИЧЕСКАЯ СВИНЬЯ - OH, SO YOU ARE OF THE WORST CAPITALIST! YOU ARE OF THE KING OF CAPITALISM! PIG!!!! THE POOR MUST OVERTHROW YOU! YOU ARE A F*CKING CONSERVATIVE COUNTRY THAT HATES THE POOR! I HUMILIATED YOU IN THE SPACE RACE! pls gib mcdonal YOU AND YOUR IMPERIALIST PUPPETS ! YOU ARE THE ONLY THING STANDING BETWEEN ME AND WORLD DOMINATION A COMMUNIST UTOPIA AND YOU KNOW THAT.
• Царская Россия - TSARIST SCUM THAT LIKES TO KILL AND OPPRESS POOR PEOPLE AND MINORITIES!!! LIKE I DON'T LITERALLY DO THE EXACT SAME BUT ON EVERYONE ELSE TOO!! GLAD MY FOUNDERS KILLED YOU!!!!
• Нацистская Германия - We made an alliance, we were going to split Europe between ourselves, but YOU BETRAYED ME. WELL, NOW I WILL DESTROY, EVERYTHING YOU HAVE CREATED!
• Финляндия - Why is the snow talking Finnish?

How to draw

Flag of the USSR, the specific variation of the hammer and sickle being used the longest time of all

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics has a drawing rating of intermediate.

1. Draw a ball.
2. Fill it with red.
3. Draw the emblem of the sickle and hammer in the top left of the ball in yellow.
4. Draw the eyes and you are done!
5. Draw a ushanka or general's hat with the communist star or hammer and sickle on it (optional)

Color Name		HEX
	Red	#CC0000
	Yellow	#FFD700

Gallery

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  Cold War
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  What is he boutta do?!
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  On Magma's Art Jam
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  grrr
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  Old attempt at German history

See Also

• Bolsheviks
• Leninism
• Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
• Stalinism
• Soviet Union in World War II